city lights go down two by two
by LadyLevi
Summary: He's a fake playing at a villain tricking the hero and she's the Princess who peeled off her Prince's armour so she could slay the dragon herself. She's taking acid to his mask and finding a billion others behind it. Romy, no doubt.


City lights go down two by two

Summary- He's a fake playing at a villain tricking the hero and she's the Princess who peeled off her Prince's armour so she could slay the dragon herself. She's taking acid to his mask and finding a billion others behind it.

Disclaimer- I own nothing

Warnings- This may be trauma triggering to some people, swearing and Not Very Vague Illusions to Mean People.

Notes- So. I almost died a few months ago and as such have fallen waaaaaaay behind in just about everything. But since I have kept writing in those months I now have a shit-load of stuff to post. Next week. This week is for shitting myself about essays, so please enjoy this and the Master Post of Sunshine (because I am not fixing all the damn breaks, way to fuck me over FF).

Onward!

X

Her vision is skewered in nightmares.

X

Serendipity

Karma, fate, _destiny _

Is it _serendipity_ that she meets the man she is absolutely sure was her soulmate some other bright beautiful life in a dirty bar in Canada? Maybe, who cares? In this lifeline he's a villain, she's a Rogue and both of them are heading straight for the wrong end of a karmic gun. If she was less _serious _(read- _pissed the hell off _and actually a tiny bit afraid of the big, bad place she's alone in) about making it the hell out of dodge she might've let him pass her by, taken the cigar and the piss smell for the warning sign it was, (Heartbreak City, population –_you, sweetie_) maybe even tried pick pocketing him a little or ruffling those grimy, blood-stained feathers before dumping him on his drunk ass. As it stands, she does none of the above. She let's hope buoy her along and over to the X-Men already sitting and waiting for someone like her (some stupid damsel-in-distress that she's actually _not_, but, hey, at least they're trying) and Logan (who they treat like a dangerous lost puppy which he is and it must've been another life because she knows she can trace the scars all over him back to a tenacious woman with too much to lose) who is mighty unimpressed by the whole shebang.

Except for Dr Grey's legs, he's plenty impressed by them

Both of them look at each other and smile, his eyes are hard and delicious; a glass full of smoke, ghosts and mirrors that damn well reflect the glint from her bloody teeth.

Offhandedly she remarks about something, tilts her voice in a whirlpool of sarcasm and watches his hackles rise up. From then on this nightmare is easy, she directs his attention to the light that Xavier tries so hard to wrap himself in and pretends it makes her happy (but to define happiness is to lose happiness because her definition was her mother's hands in her hair and her dogs nose on her ear and a million small things to do with _contact_) twisting his arm because what she sees in him is a soul like her own. One used to the nightmares behind each step, around each corner, the ones that slip between her eyelids and _stay, stay, stay_. But he's also the girl she was before her mutation woke up her crazy, the girl who hates trodden on flowers and helps broken things. Who had a parent who loved her and one she could've done without.

_That _is the part that speaks the most about him.

_That _is the part that's not yet the broken memories-shards-piecesofasoul she keeps neatly tucked away in her head.

They're soulmates because she's seen into the soul of him and found nothing wanting, he's _hers _because if nothing else she will always understand the sad thing that lives in the middle of the broken threads he calls a heart. In another place, in another city, in another _reality _they will fit together perfectly and she will hold the howl in his bones against the ripped up muscles in her heart and calm it.

But-

This isn't there and she gave up on perfect when Mr Right slipped his life instead of his tongue through her lips. She doesn't get perfect now; she gets this cheerless little karmic farce already saying she's done too much.

Heartbreak City

X

The professor slips into her mind one day while she's making waffles and trying not to think about the dark thing that haunts her eyelids, the one that watches with big, dark eyes for every moment, every falter, every _failure_. He catches her between her picking it up and smoothing the chipped pathways of her head to slide it somewhere safe. She knows he's seen it because something like anger flies from one end of his face to the other and something hard tries to slam over the dark thing.

(She almost tells him that it doesn't work like that, the dark thing is there to remind her of what she is. It doesn't just _go away_)

She pours maple syrup over her waffles and makes a strong lot of coffee, pouring as much sugar into the black swell as she can (because as much black as she wears she hates the darkness; it has too many faces and she wishes she didn't know so many of them) before dumping them both on the table and glaring at some guy with a moustache. It gives her the tiniest deep purple thrill to have control over something, even if it is how many people hate her at any given time.

Professor Xavier takes up the spot and suddenly she doesn't want the waffles anymore. She knows he's seen it and that he knows what she knows what he knew the second he met her. What every foster family and every boyfriend and everyone everywhere always knows.

You can't fix this.

X

The thrill of it is she never expected Bobby.

Bobby with his hair and his voice and his determination to be a _hero_

She never expected to be his damsel. Granted 'Princess' is never a post she really wanted. But when a knight comes calling...well, you put on your dress and hike your way up that tower. And hike she did. She crawled up the steps, kicked off her combat boots at the door and lets down her long, long hair (even though past experience has said that short hair is really the way to go).

Bobby, sweet stupid boy that he is, buys it hook, line and sinker.

He sweeps her off her feet and places kisses on her gloved hands and waits for her and carries her books and is so safe and so nice and _so much like Cody. _That's probably why she puts up with it as long as she does.

Does he really think she can't see the odd smear on his collar bone? The perfume that belongs to Amara and Jubilee and eventually Kitty? The messages on his phone that come only when she's asleep? The hotel cards in his wallet when he pays for an expensive dinner?

She notices

And she ignores

She kinda knew it would end up like this. Her on her own in a relationship going nowhere. Somewhere between the dying girl she was and the comfortable woman she just might be she gave herself something she's gonna really miss when it's gone.

Hope

And hope is a one way ticket to where?

Heartbreak City

Population you, sweetie

You and that heart you keep on saying was broken on hard wood floors.

(And this is when you should know that the light he put in your soul is going out)

X

"_Not tonight, Rogue. I've got things to do"_

"_Not including me, right?"_

X

She takes the cure for Logan, actually

He need not know that.

She takes it because he takes to growling at Bobby and worrying so much that, that heart sick thing in him starts to rip apart more. She takes it for him so that he will be okay when she can't be there anymore. She takes it for him so that she has a chance of having a kid and naming it after him.

She takes it for him because he would never do it for himself

(He's not selfish like she is; he wants to help and she just...wants)

X

She comes back without gloves. He says he didn't want this. Kitty's sitting on the stairs. Like hell he didn't want this.

X

Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

She sees it next

When Xavier is long gone six feet under and Bobby is doing his best to convince a wayward green haired girl to give him a go, Kitty is watching Rogue with too much intent. It's dangerous to watch the way Kitty does, all shades and sharpness and itty bitty lion teeth. Kitty watches like those murky eyes she sees inside her own, like the dark and the feel of a hard wood floor covered in blood. She watches with the same ice and vitriol and Rogue can see those lights dimming out for her.

Heartbreak City

If Rogue were a better person, if this dark thing didn't twist her up so much that she could barely see forward, if she didn't want someone else to hold this sinister screeching thing for a moment so she can _breathe-_

_If she were a better person_

She would tell Kitty to stop looking and run as far and as hard as she can before it wraps her up as well.

X

It never occurs to her that just maybe Kitty sees the dark edges too.

X

Right here, right now he's a loaded gun of scepticism and she's got both hands on the trigger.

That's what she thinks as she shows _Gambit _around the estate. Tittering stupid about things he doesn't care about, never will care about, and she almost does the stupidest thingand tells him what he's here for. What she came for. What they _all _came for.

She can tell that there is nothing tying this boy anywhere. The shadows seem to skitter at his edges and she wonders what ripped this boy's soul out. Then something inside her shifts and she forgets. Gambit isn't listening to her and that's okay, she stopped caring about the way men stared at her a few years back –like they could save her if they tried hard enough (she does wish he'd have the decency to stop being so blatant about, she _still isn't _a damsel). Logan passes by and he strings his familiar scent of dirt and rugged contentment that almost covers the baser piss and cigar smoke. For a moment the dark that follows Logan like a sick thing folds into Gambit and something inside her shatters.

That _connection _right there?

That's hers

And she can't understand why he has it too

X

She's riding a million times the speed of light

One turn, two turns and soon enough all she is a bunch of turns moving too fast to catch. It goes faster and faster and faster and faster andfasterand_fasterandfasterandfast_- till she lets go and spins out with the fallout. The dark thing leaps out for a moment and she crashes on the ground (this is not the first time she hits ground merely the first time she actually means too) afterward she shakes it off and looks at the bright red and metal mural of what she's leaving behind her. The bike is totally gone and she contemplates what this means.

Then she decides she doesn't care anymore.

Later, Kitty will find her washed up on a sketchy side street staring at a break between two buildings and all Kitty will do is sit down next to her and hold her hand.

(After that, Marie will find Kitty with a finger down her throat and she will sit down and return the favour)

X

In the end, all both of them are, are two girls with a daddy complex and a knack for getting into trouble.

X

Gambit stays

Storm smiles and congratulates Rogue like _she_ did something. She didn't. She just refused to show him exactly what he wanted.

(She refused to let him know the truth about this place

That it can't save you)

The amicable response everyone has to Gambit bothers her

She doesn't understand how they can find someone so...unreal... so _amazing. _She looks at him and sees no substance, nothing at all, like the boy found liquid moonlight and painted himself in it. Here in this big house with all its corners and whispers, he is _nothing _more than a thief of their time and their heart-space. He gives nothing and expects everything in return.

And he gets it

And she just doesn't _get it_

How can people be so willing to trust and care and give themselves to someone who withholds _everything?_

(She mentions this to Kitty who pats her head and tells her to look in a mirror sometime

She does, she still doesn't _get it_)

X

Logan calls her on her bullshit

Asks why she can barely stay in the same room as Gambit and she doesn't lie to him. Says he's not real and he's just smoke and mirrors. Logan raises one untamed eyebrow and tells her to get the hell out of dodge for the night. She protests. He growls. She goes. No reason to complicate.

She ends up in a bar, mostly drunk and rejecting _gentlemanly _offers of company.

She refuses because this isn't a fairytale and princes don't come dressed in trench coats and cheap whiskey. She refuses because her feet are sore and tired from running away all the time and for once she'd like to be able to close her eyes and not find someone else there. She says no and no and _no way _so many times it starts to crawl across her fingers and bleed into her pretty green dress.

(She _hates _green, _hates it. _That's not her colour. Her colour is that shade that blinks in and out of your eye sight like burn and shatterglass.)

_No_

But then _he _comes with his fakeness and his cigar and the spices that kinda feel like home. And it's a little too late for her sanity when she realises that she kinda likes that (and she won't admit that she's been watching him like he's been watching her and she knows that predatory look in his eyes like she knows the scar under her left breast –she knows that man before he stepped into her perfectly crafted denial and shook it up).

Tonight he's brought the darkness tighter around him and it glides over things. Who _did _this boy sell his soul to, because that's some mighty fine darkness he's growing there, best she's seen but her own and the waking terrors of a magnetic boy. His mouth opens and she thinks he says something but this time she's the one not listening.

Because she's so _tired _and it would be so _nice _for someone else to hold this for awhile

(Hold her for awhile)

And she finds a quiet _yes_ slipping out

X

"-_avoiding poor Gambit ain't nice, cher. How about you make up for-"_

"_Yes" _

X

Later she will lie on her back and think that this was a bad idea.

It won't be in bed with him or a groan into a pillow, it will be a full blast crying fit complete with booze and plate throwing. She and Kitty will fight and fuck and decide not to do the last one again (doesn't anyone wonder why Kitty manifests her powers by slipping through her bed? And why her _daddy _was the first one to find her?) and cry and laugh as they rip up teddy bears.

Then the dark lines will recede from Rogues vision and they will wake up sombre enough for Kitty to expertly apply makeup over the bruises.

Kitty will drag a finger across her scars and it will feel like a knife (or _Remy's _hot tongue) and she will not flinch, simply place a hand behind Kitty's ear and hold all of her sadness for awhile.

X

"_I never understood why it was me, you know? I wasn't willing and I wasn't pretty and _why me?_ I was a gymnast and I was flexible and so tiny and my coach would always say the beautiful ones were skinny and I'd find myself in the bathroom with a finger down my throat and then in the kitchen with a box of sugared carbs. All they ever said was be skinny and legs wider and stretch taller and you can be _better _and they both...they ruined me. Took the child I could've been and mangled her. I don't want to be better. I want to be _me._"_

"_Then be you._"

"_How can I? Everyone here is just the same. Be better. Stand taller. Fight. Fight. Fight. I don't have enough fight left, Rogue. I'm just about washed up. I can't be Storm or Logan and run into burning buildings. I can't be you or Remy and shove it all behind me. It made me."_

"_What can I do?"_

"_I don't know, I really don't know"_

X

And she thinks about it. Really.

She avoids him in the halls and goes out at night. Ignores the cat-calling and the roses that float to her window _every damn morning._ Puts herself back together again in a way she hasn't had to in years. Plays out her own tune between smoky bars she's never been to and fight clubs she denies having been to before. Night after night after night after night, she drags herself up and down other peoples self destruction and watches the dark things slip in and out of them.

(The truth- she wants them to save themselves

Maybe they can show her how)

In between Heartbreak City and the rest of the world she thinks about _Him _and how she still doesn't _get it. _They're not the same, not at all. Rogue never wanted to take anyone down with her, Gambit always did. He's a fake playing at a villain tricking the hero and she's the Princess who peeled off her Prince's armour so she could slay the dragon herself. She's taking acid to his mask and finding a billion others behind it.

What kind of a sick twisted game is this?

He takes to stalking her, covering up the spaces the dark eyes used to be and terrifying her every time she blinks. Stalking her between those blinks by turning up everywhere she is and stinking it up with his _not real-ness _and the smell of the South. This, this nearly drives her over the edge.

He's a _ghost _and she is _moving on _already. As the king of wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am he should know that this is _not cool. _She doesn't need him to save her.

X

Things, of course, go badly-

"_For fucks sake Swamp Rat, stop following me! I don't like you, that ain't gonna change in a hurry!"_

"_Persistence is a virtu-"_

"_Stop it. This ain't a game. _I _am not a game. You need to stop following me. I don't _need _you"_

"_And what if I need you?"_

"_You don't, no one needs me. That's a pretty constant theme in my life."_

"_...doesn't it get lonely staring at the dead all the time?"_

"_Don't you _dare!"

"_Always wondering why it was you they picked on? Why you suffered?"_

"_This isn't fair..."_

"_Life never is, _Rogue_. Do you think I can't see it? Do you think _that's _something you can hide from? Oh, no, I _know _you, what lurks behind your eyes and screams in the dark and guess what?_

"_I still need you"_

X

Soon, though, these things come to an end.

The cure fades from her fingers and she finds it easier to bare this curse. Her gloves become shorter as the days get longer and she and Kitty take to jumping off cliffs whenever possible.

Logan starts training them the day after they come back from a trip upstate still reeking of antiseptic and dirt. They'd followed rumours of a vaccine all the way up and the fallout all the way down. Turns out, there'd been an island a long time ago that held the secrets to what's lying in her DNA, but two mutants and a lot of willpower burnt it down. She and Kitty try anyway and find that the locals –some still remembering months of torture and glass walls- are a little less than joyous to see them.

She never bothers to tell Kitty that the wet stink of Logan is still ground into the dirt.

X

They discuss fatherhood one day, no one remembers why, Kitty holds her hand and glares daggers at Peter who is clearly not paying enough attention to her. She pushes her food around her plate and says nothing.

When she looks up Remy is looking at her and she can't find it in herself to stop looking back.

X

There's one day, every year, that she spends lying on her bedroom floor.

Her floors now are wooden and silky and she remembers the feel of cream carpet and the rough scent of untamed pine. If she flips her hands upwards she has the soft brush of air, if she moves downward her own exhale. Spreads her legs and there's still a sharp blow across them, a slap on her face, burns on her hands, over and over and over and over and ov-

Inhale

Rough floor

Exhale

Air

Her floor is 48 pieces of wood. Her floor was a red rug.

X

True fact-

Her father is dead as doornails.

True fact-

She saw him go six feet under

True fact-

She poured kerosene over his grave –just in case.

True fact-

She wishes he was alive so she could kill him

True fact-

When she was younger her bedroom rug used to be cream, her father turned it red.

True fact-

She still thinks she deserved some of it.

X

She dreams of _him _chasing her

Down hallways and across corridors. One door and then three and then fifteen and then far too many to count. Doors and doors and doors and doors. Each morning she wakes with his name etched on her lips and sits in her bed wondering why she insists on being alone. She opens her door to the usual bouquet and smiles like this is the dream and the monster thing in her head is the reality. A pang crosses her legs and the scars she used to have gloves to cover up throb. They are, like the eyes that he so easily replaced, a reminder of what she is.

And what she is isn't very nice.

X

"Fuck _off, _Swamp Rat" she's curling the words in disgust, pushing with her whole personality. Go. Away.

"Can't comply," he grins and steps a little closer. She would step away now but she doesn't want to, she's not stupid, rampant self delusion isn't her style (except for that bit where it absolutely is) she knows she likes having him really close. So instead of placing a sharp hand and a sharper word she moves half a centimetre closer and waits to call his bluff. He has to be playing with her. Has to.

No, stupid her, she really shouldn't bet against him.

He moves even closer.

"Yes Cherie?"

Funny, she never thought this would happen in an empty corridor in bright daylight. They're night people. People of the folding darkness and sharp edges. They stand closer then everything says they should and she looks into _his _eyes. Not the ones running her imagination ragged. They're intense and bright and there's not a hint of the darkness in them.

Maybe it's then that she realises that whatever game this was for him, it ended a long while ago.

"Why?" she asks, eyes still locked together, her hand ghosting his chest, "Why would you need me?"

His hands (and know that she's looking, there are scars etched into them, not all self inflicted) cup her face and she doesn't draw him in. Just in case this is the bit that's lying to her.

"Because you're beautiful."

And he kisses her, shocks her lips a little so a little piece of her opens up and takes him in. He floats around in her mind till she can step back and think about what he just did. By the time she's sorted herself out he's gone and her heart is ripping its way out to follow him.

X

He gives her one memory, only one

He is seven and he is tired. Seven and hungry. Seven and a moment away from simply giving it all up. Seven and killing people with his touch. Seven and realising that everything that's ever made him happy is slipping away.

Seven and accepting the offers of a sinister man.

Seven and screaming. Seven and beaten. Seven and cold. Seven and alone. Seven and haunted by shadows of people he should never have trusted.

In a moment he is older, still alone and still haunted. But he meets a man who helps him save himself, helps a girl who will later bring him home and when he gets home finds a skunk striped woman who's tied herself to the darkness. He stays because he's curious, wants to know how she _does _it. Keeps everything from making her crazy. Killing her like it's killing him. He realises that she's got no clue either, faking it, and instead of turning him off all it does is make her seem...beautiful. He wants more then, wants to know this beauty, wants to save himself with it. She offers him one night and he takes it with greedy hands. He shouldn't, _they _shouldn't, but they will.

In one moment he finds her and in the space between that moment and the next he falls in love with her.

He is seven and no longer alone.

X

_She is ten._

_Her father is drunk, whiskey high on the air and a whip made from his belt swinging and swinging and swinging. She is ten and understanding that no matter how perfect she is this man will squash her. She is ten and realising that this is her own personal hell. Made of red rugs with wood underneath and the sweet sticky euphoria of extreme blood loss. _

_Something in her switches on then, something deep and ground in. Something she'll never be able to flick back off. Something that has her reaching for a knife. Something that has her moving to save a mother she will never see again. _

_She is ten. Her father is dead. _

_She is ten and her hands are sticky with his blood._

X

The next morning Remy is gone. They figure he'll come back eventually.

But then there's another day, week, month and soon it's been 8 months.

She hasn't seen his eyes for eight months.

X

Serendipity

Seren-fuckin'-dipity

There's a bar downtown that smells like wet dog and feels like a warm shot of bourbon. She sits there pretty in a dark blue dress and waits.

He'll have to come sooner or later.

And like clockwork he does, walks into the bar and sits two down from her. He orders something, pushes his sunglasses a little further up his nose. She walks up behind him, careful to give no indication of who _exactly _she is till she's standing an inch away, leaning against the bar.

"Man walks into a bar," she says, "The bartender says, 'Do you want to play a game? See those two rib-eyes nailed to the ceiling? You get to throw one dart. If you hit one, you get to take them home and I'll give you a free drink.' The man says, 'No thanks, the steaks are too high.'"

He turns to her, bright eyes glinting, and asks, "Are the stakes too high?"

Translation- Are you willing to take a risk on Heartbreak City?

"No, I guess they aren't." She says and swigs his drink.

This moment is meant to be big. Huge. All consuming.

Instead, all she can think of is Kitty with her secret smiles and Storm who probably guessed before anyone else and Logan who'll grunt and threaten in equal amounts. She can barely even think of him, doesn't think of him at all, until his hands are on her hips and she tastes whiskey on his lips. Eyes close and when another pair inside her head open up she finds that she's not so scared anymore.

And when she wakes up the next morning, with his hand on her back she'll think she's happy, she's safe and more importantly she may be on the road to finally doing it.

Saving herself

X

END


End file.
